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Sunday, November 9, 2014

Brickhouse may not have been born with a silver spoon on his pallet; and appropriately his blue collar past contributes to an unfashionably casual vernacular.

Accordingly these paintings are fashioned the old-fashioned way. They are of no use as eye candy, and I’d guess his brushes are encrusted with a patina of poignant memory.

Brickhouse’s work is all about sensation and persona. Although not exclusively autobiographical, they largely stem from original sources of recalled life experience. Artist’s need strong hands. To this end Brickhouse worked on a fishing boat in his youth, an avocation that still reverberates in his imagery.

The Sparrows

2014

oil on cavas.

22" x 28"

Yet this artist thrives on a sensitivity tuned in to psychic implications. The potential for a mythic narrative is not so much heroic, as bashful. References to imaginary identities have vague correspondencies with the ancient Greeks, but morph into elusively phantasmagorical fictions filtered through an interpretive lens.

Akin to a child’s bedtime fable, utterly non-mechanical fairies dance and prance to some indistinct tune heard only at the onset of sleep.

Cave's Light III 2014

2014

oil, glitter and silver pigment on canvas.

30" x 20"

The gelatinous, monochromatic architecture of these interiors become part of a larger continuum. A persistent left to right procession inhabits the semiotics of the artist’s picture plane. We are witnessing only a small portion of a hallucinogenic stage play that extends beyond our visual sightlines.

I prefer the artist’s wall pieces most when not encumbered by 3D paraphernalia, which I find tends to weigh them down.

Left to their own devices, Brickhouse’s brushy notions acquire a kind of sloppy finesse.

They engage an illusionistic flux that free up his potent symbols, without need for compositional depth or overly textured impasto. The flat paintings are based on patterned, repetitive motifs that resonate with a delicate physicality.

This reflective approach culminates in “Moving Wood II“. Ostensibly a re-creation of time spent lugging plywood from his house, this painting exudes a goofy splendor. Possibly a fragment from some postmodern ballet, or a Daffy Duck cartoon, it vibrates with figurative intensity.

Brickhouse’s work inhabits his being, which is his medium as much as paint. This totality of creative momentum, lends credibility to his swervy little world. We should appreciate this private realm gone public, as a rare glimpse into a minds eye.

Monday, September 29, 2014

I’d like to think Bushwick will end up spawning creative
talent identified as part of a particular time and place. The Bushwick scene
has been primarily a youth movement, which I see as vital to the continuity of
contemporary visual art, and historically as a connection to previous art
communities.

I’d hope that Bienvenu’s early artistic identity will always
be linked to the ungentrified origins of Bushwick’s burgeoning crowd of
rambunctious rebels.

Bienvenu’s bad boy pictorial antics helped land him some
notoriety, but those paintings are also some of his most convincing work.Poking fun at pop culture porno
relieves the artist from over-burdening his canvases with excess sentiment. The
artist’s most pressing concern in these paintings is that they not be taken too
seriously.

Bienvenu’s use of iconography serves his instinct for
layered texture nicely. The painting “Talking About Abstract Painting” with a
skull and caption bubble, delves into a nihilistic nether region of scraping
and over-painting, expressing an intuitive warning of some impending psychic calamity.

Talking About Abstract Painting

The painted works on paper sustain the artist’s ability to
isolate and magnify moments of painterly prowess. These succinct, off-the-cuff
gestures could be frames from some outré comic strip.

Bienvenu’s more ambitious, larger scale works vacillate from
tour-de-force, to less complete manifestations. I find his key to resolution
rooted in texture and physicality.

The condensed architecture seen in “Perspective” contains a
neo-abstract grid of loosely sketched facial symmetries. It’s like looking at
ten Basquiat’s stacked in a pile. This
no-holds-barred conglomeration is actually a highly refined process of improvisational
mark making, resulting in a visual synthesis of pigmented tapestry.

Perspective

The artist can get a bit carried away by his rock concert
conceit, indulging in acrobatic maneuvers that can come off as a little flat.
But when textured nuance takes priority, he becomes more of a painter, and less
of a raconteur.

Yet narrative content is a crucial aspect of Bienvenu’s
figurative inclinations. Whether a vulgar reference to a sex act, or a
sociological documentation of tattooed biker trailer trash, the artist usually has
a story to relate.

However they are not morality tales, and despite his
enthusiastic renditions, Bienvenu does not cast judgment. He likes to watch.
His powers of observation, supported by a savvy grasp of R Crumb-like illustration,
are abetted by his knack for painting theatrically constructed compositions. He
paints dramatic moments in progress. This might be considered a new version of
New York action painting, via Southern Culture On The Skids.

I like that the artist has worked through his influences of decadent
Beckman and ironic Crumb, et al, while managing to sustain his youthful exuberance.
This work provides a respectful nod to historical references, and then quite
literally gives us a joyful finger.

Sunday, June 15, 2014

Mesches is a stud of a painter. 90 years young, he exudes a
macho strut. This confluence of wisdom and pluck is reflected in the muscular,
confrontational strata of his painterly architecture.

His no-nonsense scenery, influenced by Soviet Social
Realism, derives from a colorful life on the left coast. Born to an orthodox
Jewish family in the Bronx, he became a left-wing Zionist interested in
Marxism. I’d assume he was sympathetic to the American Communist Party, (he was
a friend of Paul Robeson) and the enlightened tradition of the Hollywood
Comintern in the 30s and 40’s before Stalin’s crimes and McCarthy’s paranoia took its toll on the movement.

In the tradition of socialist atheism, Mesches embraces a
secular perspective. His paintings do not indulge in speculative metaphysics. They
are festooned with feisty decorations that may not soothe the soul, but are
soulful.

Detail Coming Attractions 5

Detail, Coming Attractions 6

In Coming Attractions 5,
clothes hanging from a line rudely interrupt the interior of a cathedral-like
space, playfully nudging our frame of reference, while perhaps belittling
organized orthodoxy.

Coming Attractions 5

The urban collages contain a reflective presence. Eternal Return 3 features a foreboding skull,
conjuring up medical imagery, while foreshadowing a sense of doom. Possibly an
elder’s reference to the impending urgency of mortal decay.

Detail, Eternal Return 3

Eternal Return 3

There is a rough elegance to Mesches’s collages. They may
not be technical tour-de-force’s, but what they might resist in symbiosis with
the viewer, they more than make up for in compellingly authentic visual narratives.
These rambunctiously riotous compilations of city sprawl contain haunting
imagery that evokes an apocalyptic notion worthy of that gloriously noir LA
tradition.

ETERNAL RETURN 2

Mesches’s art is laden with character metaphor. This cogent
ability to infuse compositions with symbolic versions of person and personality
lend a kind of veiled intimacy to his representational prowess. But you don’t
really get to know the artist, so much as respect him. Cryptic revelations
imbued with fire conjure up Charles Burchfield’s burning houses without the
spiritual ascendancy. This conflagration consumes an artist consumed by a
desire to paint succinctly forceful gestures.

Detail, Shock and Awe 23

Shock and Awe 23

His expansive interiors coalesce as references to dream
sensations that offer up a splendid dichotomy of loose and tight/dark and light.
In Coming Attractions 6, skeletal
archetypes span a voluminous void, inhabited by iconographic constellations of
dinosaur fossils floating about an allegorical realm.

Coming Attractions 6

The crowd scene paintings foment a lustrous visage of
pigment, spread about with less of a regard for pictorial realism, and thus end
up becoming more pure compilations of chromatic intensity.

They merge towards a filmic synthesis; a long shot zoomed in,
impelling an almost abstract result. These works epitomize the artist’s
figurative gestures. Casually staged and painted, they belie a highly charged
picture plane chock full of incipient drama. Like blossoms bursting they release an
outpouring of life energy that affirms this painters humanist mission.

Mesches is an old school, lunch pail artist whose
workman-like oeuvre has hammered out a well-deserved niche. Probably the last
of his generation, it is amazing to see such a prolific artist still painting
his ass off.

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Not only does he have a Ph.D. in Italian
Literature, a mind attuned to the constructs of visual art’s dialogue with writing
and philosophy, but he also sees a lot of exhibitions, has a well-versed eye,
and makes unpredictably intriguing art that lends credence to his intellectual
prowess.

Our official resident scholar of Bushwick.

Ensconced in his art cave/aerie, D'Agostino
delves into stimulating narrative comparisons of literature and art. This
interaction between images and words compliments the nature of each medium,
while expanding the possibility of creative connections by crisscrossing a
linguistics approach within a visually intuitive framework.

Vapors and Squalls, or Mediums ventures into realms of climatic metaphor, exploring
the inner/outer aspect of moody atmospheres, perhaps as Plato might have
envisioned it:“So it is
with air: there is the brightest variety which we call aether, the muddiest
which we call mist and darkness, and other kinds for which we have no name...”

The exhibit employs literary quotes found by the artists that expound
on their images, of which I have excerpted below.

Karen Marston's vortexes and crashing waves, seen in her “Disaster”
series, import a graceful notion of gloom and doom, in a cautionary, quasi-representational
weather report.

“I see the whirlwind hanging
from the black sky”

From Medea, Euripides

By contrast Jonathan Quinn’s monochromatically inclined quietude,
transports us to sublime doldrums of eloquent pigment. Coupled with intricate, small
photos of less placid conditions, these serene mediations connect well with:

“Water, water, everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink”,

From The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner

Kate Teale’s sultry grids
suffused with graphite, conjure up a curious dichotomy between wet and
dry.Perhaps illustrating the ebb
and flow of tidal forces are more to her liking than making any overt
references to nature:

“One summer blizzard is much like another”

“You may sleep dreamlessly nearly all the time”

“or drowsily you may visit other parts of the world, while the drifting
snow purrs against the green tent at your head.

But outside there is raging chaos.”

From The Worst Journey In The World-Antarctica, 1910-1913, Apsley
Cherry-Garrard

Wendy Klemperer’s howling,
snarling beasts may portend Mother Nature’s cruelty, or Gaia’s primeval
instincts. The artist portrays her creatures as players in Darwin’s grand
scheme of survival. Could there be a moral to this story?

“Full in this rapid wake, and many fathoms in the rear, swam a huge,
humped old bull, which by his comparatively slow progress, as well as by the
unusual yellowish incrustations over-growing him, seemed afflicted with the
jaundice, or some other infirmity. Whether this whale belonged to the pod in
advance, seemed questionable; for it is not customary for such venerable
leviathans to be at all social. Nevertheless, he stuck to their wake, though
indeed their back water must have retarded him, because the white-bone or swell
at his broad muzzle was a dashed one, like the swell formed when two hostile
currents meet. His spout was short, slow, and laborious; coming forth with a
choking sort of gush, and spending itself in torn shreds, followed by strange
subterranean commotions in him, which seemed to have egress at his other buried
extremity, causing the waters behind him to upbubble.”

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

This latest compilation of works on canvas by Gandy Brodie
is something of a mini survey that focuses on the artist’s relationship to his
immediate environment. This is a relevant concept since Brodie was always tuned
in to local nuance, whether it was a dead bird on a sidewalk of SoHo, or a
fictional tree falling in the vegetive density of a forested picture
plane.

Later on in his life Gandy did divide his time between New
York and Vermont, but my feeling as a former student at his atelier in Newfane,
was that he felt more at home in Vermont.He and his wife Jocelyn owned a modest bungalow in Townsend,
close to the barn he rented in the center of Newfane. The barn had two stories. The students worked downstairs in
various niches that may have once stored hay, or corralled livestock. Gandy had
his own working area upstairs, a dark little rafter that suited his nesting
instinct nicely.I recall watching him paint on a self-portrait that had been
in progress for many years. In typical Brodie fashion the paint had been
relegated to a state akin to the historical layers of an archeological dig.
What may have started as an innocent reflection of facial symmetry had now
become a thickly brooding notion of insightful trepidation. What had he
wrought? A visage worthy of Rembrandt, yet rooted in a profoundly insecure and
vulnerable personality. Gandy always said he would’ve only taken lessons from Rembrandt
or Cézanne, but I think that bravado may have masked a deeply ingrained belief
that he and his art were riddled with idiosyncratic faults. I watched in awe that summer as the self-portrait gradually
glazed over into an image of a bumpy icicle, reeking with metaphorical
implications. Gandie’s lower east side origins never left him; he loved
the dense architecture of life in a busy metropolis. I was told in no uncertain
terms that to be a real painter I had to leave Vermont, and go live in a
cold-water loft in New York.I only knew Gandy in New York for a couple of years before
he died, but this exhibit revisits his earlier tenure in the mean streets to
good effect. Much of the work from the mid fifties and early sixties was done
before he lived in Vermont, and employ a gritty persona of figurative compositions
that exude a tough, bluesy poetry. The city tree theme encompasses a pervasive sense of the
struggle for renewal in Brodie’s perpetual duality of self/nature in conflict.
The epic tale of Brodie’s legacy is not so much a sweep, as it is the plodding
progress of inspired determination. The epitome of Gandy’s oeuvre culminates in his floral
paintings. The workman-like stance that inhabits his cityscapes, combines in
these still lives with a reverence for the natural world. Pigment bubbles up
like some gurgling spring, exuding the essential essence of a delicately
fragrant sensibility. Yet these blossoms are encrusted with substantial weight.
Their surfaces mask a tremendous burden, exhausted by an exquisite finality.
Its as if the slightest additional mark might result in a psychic collapse.
This art has reached a peak state of painting that cannot be exceeded. I believe Brodie was a naturalist at heart. His figurative
work (both animal and human) inevitably leads to a humanist celebration, but
always in the context of architecture as a naturally occurring phenomenon. Kudos to Steven Harvey and Jennifer Samet for making this
exhibit happen. I was particularly impressed by the wonderful catalog available
for free, due to the generosity of the Wolf Kahn, Milton Avery, and Hans
Hoffman foundations. Brodie’s work is now way over due for a major museum
retrospective. I know there are hundreds more paintings and drawings that could
be assembled for an in-depth survey of this artist’s invaluable contributions
to twentieth century painting.

I don’t know if Gandy ever witnessed this event himself, but
I’d that guess he did. The Birth Of A Fawn series resists conventional sentimentality
and representational coyness, in favor of investigating the mysterious sensations
of birth and origin.

Friday, January 31, 2014

“Socrates SculpturePark was an abandoned riverside landfill and illegal dumpsite until 1986 when a
coalition of artists and community members, under the leadership of artist
Mark di Suvero, transformed it into an open studio and exhibition space for
artists and a neighborhood park for local residents.”

Socrates is certainly one of the more engaging art viewing
destinations east of the East River. Di Suvero’s studio lot lurks large adjacent
to Socrates. His massive steel sentinels peer in upon the park with an
impervious, yet benevolent gaze.

A stroll through it’s relatively unimproved environs features
a landscape littered with leftover remnants of industrial detritus. Yet there
is an element of quietude that envelops the place. Hidden nooks and crannies are
scattered about, and then the grand vista of the sprawling East River, framed
by Socrates’ own little beach, contribute to a hushed contemplation at the
intersection of art, architecture and nature.

Wandering about the hardscrabble grounds is always an art
adventure. The eclectic nature of Socrates’ installations ranges from the overt
(politically as well as visually) to the nearly invisible. (As an aside to
social stratification, KennethPietrobono has interred innocuous looking plants that blend into the background scenery in
his park-wide installation Selections from the Modern
Landscapes.)

Dredging up a
1949 Dodge Power Wagon similar to one Robison used in a performance during the
Peekskill riots of 1949, the artist invokes all sorts of connotations relating
to black rural agrarian traditions, as well as a scathing indictment of racist intolerance.

Quilting installed
under a floppy awning serves as a kind of abstract bulletin board or
storefront, relating a visual throwback narrative that evokes Gees Bend
gentility.

Thrusting
across the ramshackle flatbed is a crossbeam based on a Roman battering ram,
encrusted with quilted barnacles, and mounted with the head of Paul Robison instead
of the traditional ram horns.

This
configuration could be considered in an allegorical context. Portraying
Robison’s visage as an heroic symbol may belie manipulation by Soviet
propagandists, but he was indeed a champion of civil rights, and his
voluptuously booming voice served as bullhorn for mid century black autonomy.

Although
Thompson may have overloaded Brutus Jones with polemic, I’d think that was the
point. This is art that revels in a zeal for confrontation; the artist as an impassioned
ideologue wherein agenda takes priority. Perhaps if he had embedded a more
literal historical narrative, viewers might have taken away a more succinct
perception of Thompson’s protest.

But to his
credit the artist has avoided overt agitprop, and fashioned a visually
compelling sculpture as set design that morphs in and out of stridency. Brutus
Jones could work perfectly well purely as an existential jungle jim on a
playground derived from the artist’s psyche, and encompass a notion of cultural
identity that might trump his earnest activist intent.

Thompson’s art
succeeds from an aesthetic standpoint with a kind of funky outsider look, even
though the artist received a formal education. His rejection of traditional art
media helps sustain rebel credibility that rubs up alongside a populist pundit sensibility
seen in Thompson’s predilection for performance video. His enthusiastic axing
of a podium during a performance on the Power Wagon could've been an amusing reinvention
of Who guitar smashing.

Yet I doubt
Thompson endeavors to become an art/rock star. This underground artist seems to
inhabit a nether region of the art world mostly neglected by a predominately
white collector base. As such its good to see art created by one of the precious
few African American descendents in the contemporary art scene.

I hope we will
soon be seeing more of Thompson’s uncompromisingly entertaining commentaries on
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.

You MyungGyun’s monumental dollop of sculpture eschews social dogma for a commentary on
nature and the moment.

This South Korean artist joins the ranks of a burgeoning movement of Asian artists that have injected a freshness of spirit
into contemporary art.

Like his
compatriot Jong Il Ma’s 2008 installation at Socrates, Gyun has made a large
scale sculpture thattransforms its bulkyarchitecture into an expansive ode to nature and contemplation.

Fabricated
from the ubiquitous blue plastic re-cycling bag, still photos don’t capture the
ethereal monochromatic flutter as the feathery plastic coat catches a breeze.
The textural nuance gained from such innocuous art supplies infuses the surface with a suppleness that transcends
the mass produced matériel.

The ponderous
form achieves a kind of lumbering grace, perhaps the way a dinosaur would graze
on the upper reaches of a tree. It’s massive frameremains connected to the
ground, yet somehow gains lift, perhaps a billowy, airy blue pillow yearning for
the sky.

TamaraJohnson’s sly brand of humor seen in A Public Pooljolts our sense
of place into a disjointed perception of where things should/could be.

She is adept at
counter-intuitive association; a pool filled with grass, density encroaching on
space, or memory impeded by distraction. There could also be a sardonic poke at
suburban largess; you can almost feel Dustin Hoffman’s alienated Graduate soul
buried in dense layers of dirt and irony.

Johnson’s work recalls
the familiar, and then alters our experience of that certain reality by
distorting an expected syntax. The concept appears simple enough, but could
only have been conceived in a minds eye dedicated to disruption. Anyone up for a
dip?

Aida Šehović’sObstacle Course: Patriot Challenge offers a rousing dose of irony and could be
symbolic of nationalist fervor. A native of Bosnia-Herzegovina,
I’d think she knows whereof she speaks concerning the dangers of ethnic
militancy.

There seems to be an interpretive intent going on, the course
is set up so that viewers can undertake their own attempts at basic training.
Perhaps this is a strategy to humanize the military mindset and help us
appreciate the individual dedication and sacrifice of those committed to making
the world a safer place.

The artist may also be expressing a cautionary morality tale
concerning the risks of social conditioning and violence as a means to an end.

Is it surprising that Thordis Adalsteinsdottir’s woodsy ode to a
love bite from nature has created such an astoundingly prudish uprising (pun
intended) among the ranks of the good citizens of Queens? Or is the old adage
that good fences make better neighbors at work here, or perhaps a case of out
of sight, out of their minds?

Another cliché may also apply; that bad
publicity is better that no publicity. Although a Chelsea gallery exhibits Adalsteinsdottir, she is by no means a household name. Revenge may be best served here
if this crudely erotic, tempest in a teapot results in her becoming better
known.

Disclaimer: I had the adventure of shipping
one of her pieces to a collector.Getting the reindeer into my truck without snapping off one of the
delicate antlers was tricky, but the beast never complained and arrived no worse
for wear.

The 2013 EAF pieces are a stimulating bunch of offbeat, oddball
selections that amuse as much as inspire. Socrates is probably one of the art
world’s most egalitarian and eclectic exhibition venues. New York’s art exhibition
hierarchy is anything but a meritocracy, so when a program like the EAF comes
along that’s not all about whom you know, authenticity and diversity have a
chance to thrive.

Post Script:

Speaking of diversity, another reason to visit Socrates is
their semi feral cat colony. They are not too skittish, and some of them will come
right up to you expecting pets.